Sight-seeing at Wei Shan Lake

2014-04-17
sonrisabai
Sights
Jining
989

Weishan lake is located in Weishan County, Shandong Province, covering an area of more than 1,1260 kilometers. It’s long been famous for lotuses that stretches for miles and other breath-taking beautiful sceneries. It is also the largest freshwater lake in northern China. I took a trip to this magical place with my photographer friends I have been longed for earlier this month.

After we got there and unpacked our stuff, I couldn’t wait to see the lotus lake.The leaves stretch across 1,266 square kilometers and cover almost the entire surface of the water. We got on a small wooden boat and started sailing around in the beautiful canal. The water was very clear cuz the canal is running through the north and south. When I first saw the lotuses with verdant leaves stretching for miles, I was completely amazed from head to toe. Pink and white color lotuses were decorate with big round leaves. The air was filled with fragrance of flowers. In the mean time, I heard click-click sounds of my friends taking photos of this great view.

Then we were heading to the Weishan Island. It’s located in the center of the lake, about 5 kilometers long from east to west, 2.5 kilometers wide from south to north. There’s some inhabitants living on the island, most of them made a living through fishing, picking water chestnuts and weaving reed mat. There was a monumental cenotaph for Railway Guerrillas.

There was a beautiful legend about this island. Long long time ago, there lived a golden phoenix on the main peak of Weishan Island. With its blessing, farmers could harvest plentiful grain and fishermen could catch abundant fish everyday, people all lived a happy and worry-free life here. Till one day, there came some intruders with great Kongfu that wanted to steal away the golden phoenix. Just when the phoenix was being caged, there was thunderstorms on the island all of a sudden. The phoenix spreader its shining wings and escaped from the cage, leaving an golden egg. The people here kept praying everyday, hoping one day it would come back. Until one day, it showed in an storm and turned the egg into a golden boat and a boy with fish body. Since then, the island was blessed by the boy.

We had a delicious lunch on the island. Everyone was starving when we landed. The highly recommended dish would be Braised WeiShan Fish and it wasn’t very expensive, totally worth it.

You can’t miss lotus gathering boat if you came here. After a while, we were in the deep of the lotus lake. Time for work! We were going to gather lotus pod. After cleaning the lotus pod, taking the seed out and strip off the covering. Lotus seed was widely used in Chinese medicine and cooking. It’s good for the heart and skin. With frequent consumption, it has a nourishing effect. I had a fair amount of lotus seeds, tasted good.